Web Researcher MCP – Search with verify citations and sources
A few weeks ago I posted an early version of this. It was just an MCP doing web search for AI assistants. Since then it evolved rapidly.
The problem I kept running into is that when I use an LLM for research, it gives me citations that look right but aren't most of the time. Sometimes the paper doesn't exist. Sometimes it does exist but it's been retracted. Most times the sources are not fully vetted nor truly relevant to my search. I got tired of checking these manually.
That's why I built this updated MCP. It looks the work up in Crossref to confirm it's real. It checks the Retraction Watch data to see if the paper was pulled. It also does a basic match between the claim I'm making and what the source actually says, so I know which references to read before I trust them.
You can also hand it a whole bibliography in BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON and it tells you which entries don't resolve or have been retracted. Dead links get saved to the Wayback Machine so the reference still points somewhere later.
It's a single Go binary. Open Source (MIT) and runs against most respected search engines including specialized domain-specific ones.
If you have the same problem, I hope this is useful to you too. Appreciate your feedback.
